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The phone may not have rung at 3 a.m., but when word came of Russia’s brutal invasion of neighboring Georgia, one of the two presidential candidates instinctively understood the adventure’s long-range implications.

And one did not.

Indeed, the crisis in the Caucasus is giving voters real insight into how John McCain and Barack Obama might handle a foreign-policy emergency.

In his first public reaction, Obama merely called on “Georgia and Russia to show restraint” – a reflexive exercise in what Sen. Joe Lieberman rightly labeled “moral neutrality.”

Then Obama called for a UN Security Council resolution condemning Russia – apparently unaware that Moscow, a permanent Security Council member, can veto any such resolution.

He also suggested sending an international force under “an appropriate UN mandate” to South Ossetia. (See above, Security Council veto.)

Obama’s initial reaction was that only Georgia’s territorial sovereignty was at stake – and that the way to resolve that issue was to negotiate.

But McCain immediately understood that the real issue wasn’t just a Georgian territory violation, but Vladimir Putin’s premeditated effort to let Eastern Europe know that Russia intends thoroughly to dominate what it terms its “near abroad.”

And, belligerently, to let the world know that Moscow again considers itself a player on the global stage.

“World history is often made in remote, obscure countries,” McCain said. “It is being made in Georgia today.”

Translation: Small regional clashes can have ominous wider implications.

And, unlike even President Bush, McCain appreciates the real nature of Russia’s leader.

Where Bush famously described looking into Putin’s soul and seeing someone “straightforward and trustworthy,” McCain retorted: “I looked into Mr. Putin’s eyes, and I saw three things: a K and a G and a B.”

His firm line from the start – calling on Russia to be booted from the G-8 and for NATO to immediately admit Georgia – was a model of what the entire Western response should have been.

Obama’s campaign, meanwhile, decried McCain’s approach as “belligerent,” and pointed out that one of his advisers formerly lobbied for the Georgian government – criticism that mirrored almost exactly attacks on McCain emanating from Putin’s foreign ministry.

Pretty weak beer.

The crisis in Georgia was the first real election-season test for the two men who seek to become commander-in-chief.